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Stars sparkle within pink, filamentous swirls on a black background.
Physical World

When everything in the universe changed

By Elizabeth Quill

The revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope and next-gen radio telescopes are probing what’s known as the epoch of reionization. It holds clues to the first stars and galaxies, and perhaps the nature of dark matter.

Little movie of a solar panel, over which clouds are slowly rolling on a gloomy day.
Food & Environment

Solving renewable energy’s sticky storage problem

By Katarina Zimmer

When the Sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, humanity still needs power. Researchers are designing new technologies, from reinvented batteries to compressed air and spinning wheels, to keep energy in reserve for the lean times.

Illustrated collage highlights some of the science stories of the year.
Society

Top science stories of 2024

By Nicola Jones

This record-setting year for heat saw stunning auroras, a map of a brain, a Dengue epidemic, the first look at rocks from the far side of the Moon, an AI energy scramble and more

A conceptual collage shows a web of images such as false morels, the brain, neurons and a person in a wheelchair, against an image of mountains.
Health & Disease

A devastating nerve disease stalks a mountain village

By Terence Monmaney

Neurologists have grappled with a cluster of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis cases in France, where a fondness for a toxic wild mushroom may hold the answer

Five self-portraits by Albrecht Dürer arranged in chronological order.
The Mind

Making friends with your past and future selves

By Katherine Ellison

It’s what psychologists call self-continuity, and can improve your health and well-being

Painting showing several women in yellow robes reclining on a long bed. Some are fast asleep. One is awake.
The Mind

The ones who need little sleep

Short sleepers cruise by on four to six hours a night and don’t seem to suffer ill effects. Turns out they’re genetically built to require less sleep than the rest of us.

By Marla Broadfoot
Drawing of a home in cross section highlighting parts and places to make more energy efficient.
Society

The great green building makeover

Getting our homes and workplaces to be energy efficient has major benefits — but not when it is done one window at a time. Here’s why deep retrofits and biomaterials are key to more sustainable living.

By Kaja Šeruga
Photograph of corn stalks growing in a field. The earth is dry and cracked.
Food & Environment

Can desalination quench agriculture’s thirst?

By Lela Nargi

Miles away from the ocean, projects are afoot to clean up salty groundwater and use it to grow crops. Some say it’s a costly pipe dream, others say it’s part of the future.

Colorful visualizations of Calabi Yau surfaces suggest many possible geometries, represented as a variety of intricately twisted and folded shapes.
Physical World

String theory is not dead

By Tom Siegfried

Out of the limelight, theoretical physicists seek the math that can explain the universe’s particles and forces

Illustration shows plants with eggs where flowers should be. In center are two chickens with red slash through them. Background shows faint outline of proteins.
Technology

Cracking the recipe for perfect plant-based eggs

By Bob Holmes

Hint: It involves finding just the right proteins. With new ingredients and processes, the next generation of substitutes will be not just more egg-like, but potentially more nutritious.

A brightly colored butterfly sits on a flower, feeding.
Living World

The secrets of butterfly migration, written in pollen

By Saugat Bolakhe

Trillions of insects move around the globe each year. Scientists are working on new ways to map those long-distance journeys.

Photograph of a female earwig carefully grooming a cluster of pale eggs.
Living World

She ain’t scary, she’s my mother

By Tim Vernimmen

Elaborate courtship, devoted parenthood, gregarious nature (and occasional cannibalism) — earwigs have a lot going for them

Multimedia

A black and yellow frog clambers over sphagnum moss.
Living World

Frogs kick back against lethal fungus

By Martin J. Kernan

Scientists are seeing signs of resistance to the infections that have been wiping out the world’s amphibian populations — and developing strategies to aid in the fight Down Under

People doing different things in a crowd: walking, standing and talking, rushing, carrying things, pushing strollers, walking dogs.
Society

Bustling through the physics of crowds

By Matthew R. Francis   Illustrated by Maki Naro

COMIC: Using tools from fields like fluid dynamics to better understand how groups of people move around can improve flow and make large gatherings safer

Photograph of a small child sitting in a waiting-room chair with fists covering their face.
Health & Disease

Severe irritability in children and teens: A new understanding

By Katarina Zimmer

Kids with disruptive mood dysregulation disorder have explosive outbursts well past toddler age. Scientists are trying to work out the causes and what treatments help.

Photograph of a dead house fly infected with Entomophthora muscae with elevated wings and a black and white striped appearance to its abdomen. It has dark, ruby-red eyes and is placed on a flat surface and photographed on a dark background.
Living World

Night of the zombie insects

By Rohini Subrahmanyam

A parasitic fungus takes over the brains of flies and controls them for its own sinister ends. Here’s the science behind the horror.

Conceptual illustration of a ribosome with mRNA running through as it strings together amino acids to create a new protein.
Living World

When ribosomes go rogue

By Tim Vernimmen

Unusual variations in the cellular protein factory can skew development, help cancer spread and more. But ribosome variety may also play biological roles, scientists say.

Illustration of a woman reading to two children. There is an image of a cat in the book she is reading, and the girl says “Cat!”, while the boy says “¡Gato!”
Society

How a child becomes bilingual — and what can be done to help them get there

Kids from immigrant backgrounds in the US often struggle to develop fluency in two languages. Many factors — parental misconceptions, the lack of support in schools and social attitudes — play a role.

By Katarina Zimmer
A man rides a reclined bike race around a track
Technology

The Cybathlon: Bionic athletes compete for the gold — and push assistive technologies forward

In the international competition, people with physical disabilities put state-of-the-art devices to the test as they race to complete the tasks of everyday life

By Dana Mackenzie
Silhouette of a person pinching their forehead in pain.
Health & Disease

Studies of migraine’s many triggers offer paths to new therapies

By Amber Dance

One class of drugs has already found success in treating the painful, disorienting and common attacks. Excitement is building about a slew of additional drug targets.

Conceptual illustration shows lab-coated scientists attempting to kick a field goal but missing by many yards.
Health & Disease

Why a diabetes drug fell short of anticancer hopes

By Amber Dance

Population and animal studies suggested it could treat cancer, but the clinical trials were a bust. Here’s what happened and what potential may remain.

A collage of photos shows five high-rise buildings made of mass timber.
Technology

Sustainable building effort reaches new heights with wooden skyscrapers

By Kurt Kleiner

Wood engineered for strength and safety offers architects an alternative to carbon-intensive steel and concrete

A European robin feeds a much larger common cuckoo in a nest.
Living World

Are you my baby? The clever ways that brood parasites trick other birds

By Sofia Quaglia

Cuckoos, cowbirds and other species outsource their parental duties. Scientists are uncovering new twists in this sneaky — and often treacherous — game of survival.

An artist’s conception of an “awkward family photo” featuring multicellular animals and their unicellular cousins.
Living World

We are family: Tracing the evolution of animals

By Amber Dance

To understand the origins of multicelled life, researchers are studying a motley assortment of simpler animal relatives. The commonalities they’re unearthing offer a trove of clues about our mutual past.

A colorful hummingbird hovers at a flower, feeding with a long beak.
Living World

Hummingbirds thrive on an extreme lifestyle. Here’s how.

Soldiering through nightly suspended animation, a (nearly) all-sugar diet, backwards flight and long migrations, the birds’ tiny physiques prove mighty

By Bob Holmes
A computer drawing in which a white blood cell spits its stringy DNA at a virus.
Living World

Your cells are dying. All the time.

Some go gently into the night. Others die less prettily in freak accidents or deadly invasions, or after a showy display.

By Amber Dance

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